>The only other alleged (and it is VERY shaky) inflight message was
reported by
>Fred Goerner as having been heard by Nauru on 6210 Kcs (the frequency
she said
>she was changing to) at about noon Howland time when she should have
had about
>a half hour of fuel left and could have been coming up on Gardner.
The
>message supposedly was “Land in sight ahead.” Goerner claimed
that he saw
>this in a government file in 1965 that was later changed.

Do we know who on Nauru is supposed to have heard this message? I’d really
rather not have to dig into Goerner’s book!

From Ric

You’ll find the reference on page 318 of Goerner’s book. It is April 6,
1965. Goerner is at the Office of Naval Information at the Pentagon in
Washington to look at the U.S. Navy’s classified (at that time) file on
Earhart. Goerner has seen the file previously but he wants to see it again.
With him is Ross Game, whom he describes earlier in the book (page 220)
as “editor of the Napa (California) Register and secretary of the
Associated Press.”

Goerner says:

At first, the report appeared the same. ... Further down in the
file, however, some interesting bits of information had been added since
our first perusal the year before. ... Near the bottom of the thick
folder another piece of evidence had been added a terse, U.S. Navy
message with no heading stated, “At 10:30, the morning of the disappearance,
Nauru Island radio station picked up Earhart on 6210 kcs saying, “Land
in sight ahead.’ I blinked my eyes. Nearly two hours after Amelia had
supposedly run out of gas, a radio station in the British-controlled
Gilbert Islands (sic) had received her voice. Why was this message not
included as part of the 1937 search? what had she sighted? Was that the
extent of the message?

Fred Goerner provided more information in a letter to a TIGHAR member
dated April 18, 1989:

Ross Game and I found that message in the CLASSIFIED U.S. Navy
file which we were shown in 1965. We were not permitted to make photocopies
of any of the material in the file, but we were permitted to make notes
which were later cleared by the Navy. When the Freedom of Information
Act took effect, the file we had been shown in 1965 was released to the
public, but the message “Land in sight ahead” was no longer part of the
file. In other files we found that Nauru had received a message “Ship
in sight ahead” at 10:30 P.M. the evening before the disappearance. Captain
Lawrence Frye Safford, USN (Ret.), who did considerable Earhart research
in the late 1960s (and was writing a book on the matter at the time of
his death) told me he believed the message Game and I saw was pulled
by the Navy before the file was released in the belief that it had been
corrupted from the message “ship in sight ahead” and/or because I had
made a point of the morning message in The Search for Amelia Earhart.
At this writing, I am unsure whether the morning message was bonafide
or not. I am sure the message existed in the classified file we were
shown, because both Ross Game and I have exactly the same wording in
our notes.

There you have it. On the one hand it seems incredible that the file would
have been tampered with prior to its release, especially since the Navy
had nothing to hide. On the other hand, I know that the officials who
had to deal with Goerner and his allegations considered him to be a royal
pain in the butt, and the temptation to let one slip of paper – a probably-erroneous
message that only seemed to add fuel to the conspiracy fires – accidentally
fall out of the file would be great. Especially if Fred’s allegation is
true that Ross Game’s notes were identical to his own, it’s hard for me
to believe that the piece of paper was not there. Whether or not it was
a genuine transmission by Earhart is another question. If it was, it just
happens to fit very nicely into the Nikumaroro hypothesis.

Love to mother,
Ric

Subject:

Raiders
of the Lost Lockheed

Date:

8.31.98

From:

Tom
King

Tom of Ossian writes:

>What!! Do you mean there AREN’T crates of historic stuff in
musty old warehouses in D.C., just waiting to be rediscovered?

OK, it’s a bit off-point, but: two stories.

A couple of years ago I was hired by a Naval research lab that was
closing, to do a workshop for their people on the handling of historical
documents. Why? Because they’d found piles and heaps of lab notebooks
and similar stuff in old lockers, piled under lab benches, etc. Describing
experimental weapons developments going back to WWII. And despite a COMNAVINST
about the size of the D.C. yellow pages that directs Naval personnel
in the handling of documents.

Last year, GSA was about to demolish an old building in downtown
D.C. A demolition contractor’s employee opened up a room and noticed pieces
of paper sticking down through holes in the ceiling. He went up and looked,
and found the crawl space full of papers and office supplies dating back
to the Civil War, together with a sign that said “Missing Soldiers'
Bureau: Miss Clara Barton. Enquire Room Six.” When Clara moved her
office at the end of the Unpleasantness, the government (or somebody) had
just sealed up all her stuff in the attic and forgotten about it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, and
Noonan’s sextant were all cohabiting in a government warehouse somewhere.

Tom King

Subject:

Kanawa
Point (long)

Date:

9.1.98

From:

Ric
Gillespie

Over this past weekend Tom King and I developed a new hypothesis about
where Gallagher found the castaway campsite (bones, shoe sole, sextant
box, campfire, etc.). It seems to explain a lot of things that have been
troubling us and we’re pretty excited about it. We also know that a researcher
with a new hypothesis is like a teenage boy with a new girlfriend. You
have to get out of the back seat, take her to the dance and find out what
she’s like in public. So here she is.

This is going to be a long post. Bear with me.

Ever since the discovery of the Tarawa File (aka Gallagher Papers) in
the late spring of 1997, we have thought that the site described by Gallagher
was most likely the same site where we found the shoe parts in 1991 and
the campfire (with label fragment) earlier in 1997. This did not require
a great leap of faith. Gallagher said that the site was near the lagoon
shore on the “southeastern corner” of the island. Depending
upon how loosely you define “corner”, our site fit that description.
Gallagher said that it was an area scheduled for clearing. We know that
our site was cleared about that time. Gallagher described finding part
of the sole of a woman’s “stoutish walking shoe.” We found the
same thing. Gallagher said there was a fire there. We found a fire.

But if this was, indeed, the castaway campsite, why have we not found
more artifacts or bones despite intensive searching? And if the fire turns
out to be modern rather than old, as we now suspect, how does that fit?
And isn’t it perhaps just too much of a coincidence that we should originally
stumble upon the campsite in the course of an investigation of a feature
(the baby grave) which turns out to have nothing to do with anything?
And what if Gallagher was speaking specifically instead of generally when
he said “southeastern corner?”

On August 29, 1998 Tom dropped me an email which launched one of those
back-and-forth brainstorming sessions which can produce revelation or
compost. Here’s how it went.

From Tom King
8/29/98

I had a sudden thought in the night (I do, from time to time).

Niku is an atoll of sorts, but it’s an unusual atoll in that the land
around the lagoon is almost continuous. Most atolls are made up of multiple
small islands separated by more or less submerged reef, around the fringe
of a subsided mountain.

If one were thinking of Niku overall as an atoll, rather than as a single
unitary island, then one would think of it as made up of two islands –
one comprising Nutiran, Taraia, Aukaraime north and south, and Ameriki;
the other comprising Ritiati, Noriti, and Tekebeia. The southeast end
of the latter would be Tekebeia, east of Baureke Passage. I wonder how
Gallagher would have thought of it.

And just to add interest, it’s the promontory at the west end of Tekibeia
that we think was the site of the "Ghost Maneaba," where Nei
Manganibuka was allegedly sighted early in the colony’s days. John, Veryl,
LeRoy and I took a fairly close look at this promontory in ’89, but we
are unlikely to have detected anything as ephemeral as a campfire or bone
scatter. Farther to the east, as I recall (though I’ll have to dig out
the maps), it was wall-to-wall Scaevola and we didn’t look at it too closely.

Food for thought....

LTM
TK

Here I need to insert
a little explanation about Nei Manganibuka. She is the Gilbertese ancestor/spirit
who is the guardian of Nikumaroro. At some time soon after the island
was first settled, the wife of Teng (Mr.) Koata, the Native Magistrate,
had an encounter with the goddess. Here is how the event was described
by Paul B. Laxton, the post-war District Commissioner who spent several
months on Niku in 1949:

“The wife of Teng Koata, the first island leader, had been walking
one afternoon and saw a great and perfect maneaba, and sitting under it's
high thatched roof, Nei Manganibuka, a tall fair woman with long dark
hair falling to the ground about her, with two children: she conversed
with three ancients, talking of her island of Nikumaroro, and its happy
future when it would surely grow to support thousands of inhabitants.”

(A maneaba is a communal meeting house and is the central feature of a
Gilbertese village.)

Ric to Tom
8/29/98

Well, you did it again. You got me thinking and looking into things and
I found something kind of interesting. See what you think. ...

What really strikes me after reading your theory that the Ghost Maneaba
promontory at “the southeastern corner of the island” may be
the spot Gallagher is talking about is that this feature appears on the
New Zealand survey map as “Kanawa Point.” This rather clearly
implies that there was a Kanawa tree or trees at that location in late
’38/early ’39. Kanawa is rare and valuable wood. Gallagher, on 27 December
1940, says that the coffin built to convey the bones to Fiji “is
made from a local wood known as ‘kanawa’ and the tree was, until a year
ago, growing on the edge of the lagoon, not very far from the spot where
the deceased was found.” December of ’39 sounds a bit early for clearing
operations to be underway down on Aukaraime, but if Kanawa trees are rare
and highly prized, that could draw people to that place.

I think we need to re-examine Gallagher’s description of the site with
the Ghost Maneaba promontory in mind.

Love to mother,
Ric

Tom to Ric
8/29/98

My, my, my.

Remember, too, Laxton’s note about the fish pond close to the Ghost Maneaba.
Maybe a good place to camp.....?

And didn’t Laxton also say that Kanawa was used to build the furniture
in the Rest House? Ergo, people might have been visiting Kanawa Point
during the Rest House construction, which was prior to Gallagher’s arrival,
no? Or about the time the skull was found and buried?

I knew there was SOME reason I had a print made of that site, and have
had it hanging on my wall all these years. Not that you can see anything
but Level 2 Scaevola, but it’s the symbolism, don’t y’know?

But – do we have anything that would suggest whether Gallagher and the
Gilbertese thought of Niku as one island or two?

And of course, if Kanawa Point is the bones site, what the hell is Aukaraime
South?

LTM
TK

Ric to Tom
8/29/98

Check out Laxton’s description of the peninsula where Mrs. Koata saw the
Ghost Maneaba (page 150 of his journal article). On either side are big
pools where fish are trapped at low tide and frigates (or Gilbertese)
come to get them. If you were marooned and needed easy to catch food,
where would YOU camp?

The question is, which peninsula is he talking about? The skinny little
one that runs parallel to the shore line or the larger one just beyond
which goes out into the lagoon? Which one did you visit in ’89? The skinny
one was part of the area partitioned in Laxton’s land allotments. The
larger one wasn’t.

I also suspect that the location of the Ghost Maneaba may also be “Niurabo,”
the place on the island where Manganibuka was said to live (according
to Risasi on Funafuti).

LTM,
Ric

Tom to Ric
8/29/98

Great minds.....

We were never sure which peninsula Laxton was referring to, but we figured
it was probably the fat one, because it’s the one that has pools (coves,
really) on either side. That’s where we went in the tinny, poking about
in the western cove thinking there might be a nice pile of bones there.
It was one of the last things we did on the island in ’89, and was very
much a disconsolate walkabout, hoping for serendipity. I don’t recall
that we could even distinguish the skinny one from the lagoon side, and
the landward side was about Level 9 Scaevola – that’s where Bill, Jessica
and I almost bought the farm and achieved videographic fame, trying to
cut in from the other side.

TK

Ric to Tom
8/30/98

Okay, we agree that the feature marked on the Kiwi map as Kanawa Point
is probably the place where Mrs. Koata met Manganibuka at the Ghost Maneaba.
It may also be the place called “Niurabo.”

We agree that Kanawa Point, because it is on the “South East corner
of island” (if Niku is two islands), could fit Gallagher’s description
of the bone site.

We note that the flanking fish ponds would make Kanawa Point a good place
to camp.

There is an obvious Kanawa Konnection between the Kiwi name for the feature
and Gallagher’s statement that there was a Kanawa tree on the lagoon shore
near the bone site. How significant this is depends upon how common Kanawa
trees really are (or were) on Niku. Maybe we should find out just what
the hell a Kanawa tree is.

We seem to have adequate reason to suggest that Gallagher’s bone site,
Kanawa Point, and the Ghost Maneaba site (Niurabo?) are all the same place.
What is the chronology of these three encounters with this site?

The Kiwi naming certainly came first. They left before the first women
arrived. It seems logical to suggest that the presence of a Kanawa tree
on the shore was unique enough to prompt that name for that point of land.

We don’t know just when Teng Koata’s wife showed up, but because he was
the island honcho it seems likely that she was one of the first wives
to come to the island. At any rate, it seems safe to say that she was
there well before Irish took up residence in September of 1940. That raises
the possibility (if not probability) that the Ghost Maneaba incident happened
prior to Gallagher’s arrival.

If so, what are the chances that the harvesting of the Kanawa tree from
which the bone coffin was eventually made (circa December 1939), the discovery
and burial of the skull (about the same time), and Mrs. Koata’s close
encounter of the third kind (date unknown), are completely unrelated?
Right. Now we have to look closely at some hardcore folklore – the Ghost
Maneaba incident.

Laxton – “The wife of Teng Koata, the first island leader, had been
walking one afternoon and saw a great and perfect maneaba, and sitting
under it’s high thatched roof, Nei Manganibuka, a tall fair woman with
long dark hair falling to the ground about her, with two children: she
conversed with three ancients, talking of her island of Nikumaroro, and
its happy future when it would surely grow to support thousands of inhabitants.”

Let’s start from the assumption that something happened – that this woman
did not simply fabricate this story out of whole cloth. Note that Mrs.
Koata does not speak or interact directly in any way with Manganibuka.
She is strictly an observer. I get the feeling that she’s peeking through
the bushes. She is “walking one afternoon” and comes upon something
that probably scares the bejesus out of her. Reduced to its most basic
elements, removing as much interpretation as possible, she sees a female
human figure sitting on the round under a shelter. This is not a fellow
islander because the person looks dramatically different from a Gilbertese
(a tall fair woman with long dark hair falling to the ground about her).
With her are two figures which Mrs. Koata interprets to be children.
She is alive because she is conversing with “three ancients” (whatever
the hell that means). Confronted by such an apparition, Mrs. Koata quite
naturally puts it into a context that makes it understandable. But what
did she really see?

I've avoided this as long as I can. Here goes. Of all the creatures that
Mrs. Koata could have seen, she describes something that could be a completely
’round-the-bend Amelia Earhart. She is female, tall, fair-skinned, with
long dark hair. She sits on the ground under a make-shift shelter in a
good camping spot and babbles.

There, I’ve said it and I’m glad.

LTM,
Ric

Tom to Ric
8/31/98

Well, OK, let’s say Mrs. Koata does see Amelia alive. What happens then?
How do we get from there to the bones and the shoes? It’s a great story,
but ...

One thing I'm noticing reading I Kiribati oral traditions is that there’s
a lot of shape-shifting that goes on, particularly between bones and folks.
Somebody’s killed and burned and his bones stuck in a clamshell (these
are little people) and they come back to life and climb out and zap people
with lightning. Stuff like that. I wonder If Mrs. Koata doesn’t have her
vision after Koata and Co. find the skull, as some way of accounting for
the thing and making everybody feel better about having come on the bod.
Not as romantic, but it’s got its charm.

And what about the fact that it’s Koata who has the Benedictine bottle?

We definitely need to find out about Kanawa. We also probably ought to
find Grimble’s story about Koata, that Maude mentioned.

LTM
TK

Ric to Tom
8/31/98

Last night I reviewed the videotape Dirk made in the Solomons. An old
woman named Erenite Kiron told him a story about a ghost. Ms. Kiron
does not speak English. Her comments are paraphrased by a barely-audible
off-camera interpreter who doesn’t speak much English either.

My interpretation of what she’s saying is based partly on the translator’s
paraphrasing, the gestures she makes, and names I think can pick out of
her testimony.

She says that there is a place on the island called Niurabo. When people
go there they see the ghost of a fair-skinned woman who is wearing a grass
skirt that comes up over her breasts. When you get close to this ghost
her face goes blank. Ms. Kiron never saw this ghost herself but she heard
about it from a woman who did. Her name was Koata. (If I’m correct about
the names, she pronounces Niurabo as niuRABo, very much swallowing the
final o. Koata comes out koaTA.)

No mention of Manganibuka or a ghost maneaba, etc. On the other hand,
she doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about answering questions from this
I-Matang and the interpreter edits out the name Koata. I wonder what else
he edits out. I'd like to have this tape looked at by someone who is really
fluent in Gilbertese.

Your idea that Mrs. Koata’s encounter was more of a vision to help explain
the disturbing discoveries at that site, rather than an actual encounter,
would sure simplify things. The fact that Koata had the bottle may or
may not be significant. He was head man on the island and might naturally
be expected to have custody of an important object. What is interesting,
come to think of it, is that the bottle was apparently seen as worth saving
even before Gallagher arrives on the scene.

I can imagine these guys working on clearing and exploring this neat new
island that even has kanawa trees, and then they find this damn skull.
This is not good. At the very least it means there is a ghost loose on
the island. They bury the skull (as damage control) but they stay the
hell away from the place where it was found. Koata does, however, keep
the bottle that was found at the same time. Once the skull is buried,
the bottle serves as proof of this amazing and disturbing event. I can
also imagine that everyone is less than thrilled when Gallagher insists
that they go back and look for more stuff, and then the idiot wants to
dig up the skull. (I’d like to have a transcript of THAT conversation.)
It just occurred to me that Koata is not there when the bone search/skull
exhumation is going on. He’s in Tarawa (for whatever reason).

I keep coming back to the question of chronology. Where does Mrs. Koata’s
encounter fit into the sequence of events?

Tom to Ric
8/31/98

I’ll bet Koata kept the bottle because it was a neat bottle. Reminds me
of Pat’s Chuukese “father,” Katin – a guy very much like Koata
in rank, knowledge, etc. – who came to us after we’d excavated six bodies
of his quite direct ancestors, buried in the ’30s when he was a young
man, and asked if he could have the nice knife sharpener we’d found with
one of them. Everybody had been highly respectful of the dead, and the
whole village was on edge about ghosts, but here was old Katin, the most
powerful traditional knowledge bearer in much of the Lagoon, wanting to
ghoul the whetstone. Island logic ain’t our logic.

Your scenario makes a lot of sense. I wonder if Koata’s departure for
Tarawa with the bottle triggered the recovery of the skull. “Koata
sure is attached to that bottle,” Gallagher comments to someone as
the Nei Manganibuka takes the last load out to the ship. “Yes,”
the other guy says; “that’s the one he found with that skull.”
“That WHAT?” asks Gallagher, and the game is afoot. You know,
maybe this is why whatsisname, Gallagher’s erstwhile assistant and translator,
didn’t know anything about the bones. Maybe he was on the same trip to
Tarawa, and when he got back, mum was the word. That’s always troubled
me.

Ric to Tom
8/31/98

Looking more closely at the map produced from the Kiwi survey, I note
that patches of vegetation are annotated as to their make-up: “Puka
(sic) trees,” “scattered patches of Mao and Ren scrub,” etc.

In only one location on the entire island is their a notation mentioning
Kanawa. It is on the “Kanawa Point” peninsula and it says “Kanawa
trees (valuable hard wood).” The notation at our Aukaraime site is
“Puka trees.”

Gallagher makes a big deal of the Kanawa wood coffin in his 27 December
letter and in his 11 February conciliatory wire to Isaac he offers (and
then apparently changes his mind and crosses out the offer) to make him
“a little tea table – we have a little seasoned timber left.”
Kanawa wood seems to be very rare and highly prized. When the Kiwis are
there in late ’38/early ’39 there appears to be a grove of Kanawa on that
peninsula. By February of ’41 “we have a little seasoned timber left.”
Sounds like the Gilbertese really went after the stuff.

I think that Gallagher’s mention of the Kanawa tree is the key to this
thing. The settlers arrive in early ’39. They soon discover that there’s
a grove of Kanawa on the island and they start harvesting it. As Kilts
says, “They were about through” when the skull was found in
late 1939.

How and when Mrs. Koata’s encounter with Manganibuka (and the consequent
sanctification of the place as Niurabo) fit in, I don’t know. But I’m
beginning to think that we’re really on to something here.

We still, of course, have a very interesting shoe and a maybe old/maybe
new campfire down on Aukaraime – and little else despite some pretty intense
coverage of the immediate area. We’ve already postulated an exploratory
expedition ’round the atoll by Fred and AE. Bevington has told of seeing
a place on Aukaraime where someone had bivouacked for the night, but he
didn’t see any bones or sextant boxes. Maybe they stopped there for the
night, left their shoes to dry by the fire (if it turns out to be an old
fire) and woke up to discover that they had left the shoes too close to
the fire. Good thing they have a second pair with them (we know Amelia
had another pair on the trip).

They continue along and find Kanawa Point, probably a gorgeous spot in
those days. A grove of shady hardwood trees wafted by lagoon breezes,
and easy fishing in the bordering tidal pools. Spins my prop.

LTM,
Ric

Tom to Ric
9/1/98

Spins mine, too. And if I can just lay my hands on the ’78 Kiribati biological
survey, I'll bet it identifies Kanawa.

Ric to Tom
9/1/98

Don’t bet on it. I have a sneaking suspicion that Kanawa was completely
eradicated through exploitation. The 1964 biological survey written by
Roger Clapp (Niku Source Book, Section 2, Item 14) catalogs lots of different
types of trees and plants, but nothing that sounds at all like Kanawa.

That’s where we are
at this point.

Your comments are welcome.

Love to mother,
Ric

Subject:

Kanawa
Point

Date:

9.3.98

From:

Mike
Everette

Wow...

When I read this yesterday it made my hair stand on end... for more than
one reason.

The most obvious reason, of course, is – could AE have actually survived
this long? And if she did, how long did she live after the “encounter”?

The second is, the behavior described is eerily similar to that shown
by some Alzheimer’s Disease sufferers. I have seen such people take objects
out of a garage – for instance, a bale of yellow insulation – and put
them down outside; then, later, introduce visitors to “this lady
in a yellow dress” or “this blonde lady, I’m sorry but I don’t
know her name, but I want you to meet my friend...”

Perhaps, if this “ghost” was AE, she was suffering in a like
manner. She may have even made crude statues of children, just to have
someone to talk to! Yes, 42 years of age is way young to be afflicted
with Alzheimer’s, under normal circumstances... but this was hardly normal.

Of course it may not have been Alzheimer’s but a form of dementia... some
of the symptoms are similar.

Is there a history in AE’s family of either disease? Might be interesting
to know this.

Oh, wow.

Think on this. It may be less far fetched than one might first believe.73Mike
E. the Radio Historian #2194

From Ric

This kind of thing is so tough to assess realistically. We’re trying to
interpret the accuracy of a tale arising out of a culture we know very
little about that has already been interpreted by an outsider (Laxton).

I’ve been re-reading Sir Arthur Grimble’s papers, edited by Harry Maude
and entitled Tungaru Traditions. A couple of points are worth
noting. In the old days, it was not at all unusual for the Gilbertese
to keep the skull of a dead relative around the house and talk to it as
casually as they would to any other member of the family. On the other
hand, Nei Koata is not reported to have had any direct discourse with
this particular “anti” (pronounced “ahns”) or ghost.

Also, by the time of the settlement of the Phoenix Group, the London Missionary
Society had done a rather thorough job of stamping out traditional Gilbertese
customs and beliefs among the people of the southern Gilberts (where the
first settlers on Gardner were from). This was somewhat less true in the
northern Gilberts which were primarily Catholic, but at any rate – the
reaction of the people who lived on Gardner in 1939/1940 to a heavy-duty
spiritual event is not something we are equipped to say much about.

LTM,
Ric

Subject:

Visions

Date:

9.3.98

From:

Tom
King

To Mike of the Radios – I think there are a lot of better ways to account
for what Koata’s wife saw than to assume she saw Amelia. Native American
medicine people of my acquaintance see little people and ghosts and all
manner of supernatural things in places where, to my limited eye, there’s
nothing whatever to see. They’re not making it up; they see something.
What are they seeing? I have no idea, but I know that there doesn’t necessarily
have to be a visual cue that’s recognizable to the jaundiced western eye
to trigger such seeing. There’s also a very liberal use of metaphor in
traditional island discourse, and an easy sliding back and forth between
the descriptive and the metaphoric. Nei Manganibuka talking with the ancients
(communing with ancient and reputable spirit-sources of knowledge?) and
taking care of the children while talking about how good things were going
to be on the island may have been a metaphorical way of saying with authority
and kindness that everything was really going to be all right, at a time
when things weren’t going particularly well for the colonists. Or, of
course, it may have been something completely different; I don't think
speculation is going to take us very far – or rather, it can take us
a long way, but we won’t be anywhere when we get there.

But it DOES rather raise the hairs on the back of the neck, doesn’t it?

LTM
Tom King

Subject:

Dementia

Date:

9.3.98

From:

Roberta
Woods

There is a condition that can seem like Alzheimer’s in persons too young
to actually be afflicted with the condition. A friend of mine related
an astonishing story to me yesterday about her soon-to-be daughter-in-law
who had to have brain surgery due to a pocket that had developed in her
brain into which blood had pooled. Her symptoms were the same as Alzheimer’s
patients report. Only her age – 20s – convinced the doctors to look for
something else. I didn’t ask if this gal had had a head trauma that might
have caused the condition, but if AE actually did survive the crash, perhaps
this could explain such behavior. That is, if one goes so far as believing
it to be literally true. All I’m saying is that it is possible to explain
Alzheimer-type behavior with another, entirely plausible, condition.

I think I’ll contact my friend and ask if any head injury/trauma was in
the gal’s history.

Roberta Woods

From Ric

Believe me, you don’t need to have suffered head trauma to be a bit barmy
after a few weeks on Niku. It’s not the implied dementia that makes the
AE-alive-and-living-on-Niku scenario hard to swallow. I also don’t have
a problem with the notion of a reclusive, paranoid hermit avoiding human
contact on the island. I think I could do it easily. The site Gallagher
describes has clearly been abandoned for some time. There is no feeling
in his reports that this is evidence of recent habitation. So if we’re
going to pursue a literal interpretation of Mrs. Koata’s tale we’d have
to say that she came upon AE very early on and, as a consequence, Amelia
abandoned that campsite and moved deeper into the bush where she eventually
died undiscovered.

What really makes the Amelia-alive scenario hard to accept is not any
practical problem that I can think of, but rather the very outrageousness
of the notion. A gut feeling of, “Naw.” The documented story
is already better than any Hollywood screenwriter would dare suggest.
The very idea of Amelia Earhart living out her days as some kind of female
Ben Gunn is just too much. That, of course, is not a good reason to reject
the possibility out of hand. The real problem is, as Tom says, that it’s
hard to see how we’d ever know. As a research topic it’s a dead end.

There’s another reason not to get too wrapped up in this speculation.
Can you imagine what would happen if the Weekly World News got hold of
this? I don’t think it would do much for our credibility.

LTM,
Ric

Subject:

AE
Survival – Absurd

Date:

9.4.98

From:

Ted Whitmore

We’ve already established the fact that drinkable water was not and is
not available on Niku and survival without water is impossible.

Coconuts provide the water needs of native populations on desert islands
until rain supplements can be collected. They know how and are equipped
to meet their needs.

How can anyone even consider that the “poor little rich girl” AE would
have enough survival skill knowledge to last 30 days, much less 2 years,
on such an equatorial island?

From Ric

I have argued both sides of this one. The great, and still not late, Harry
Maude finds the notion of AE’s demise on Nikumaroro incredible specifically
because he can not imagine why anyone would have difficulty thriving on
such a lovely island. It was Harry who, as Lands Commissioner for the
Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony, conceived and executed the Phoenix
Islands Settlement Scheme in the late 1930s. He went on to become the
pre-eminent authority on Micronesian culture.

In my view it all comes down to rainfall and not getting hurt. There’s
plenty to eat and if it rains often enough, you should be okay unless
you fall on the coral, get bitten by a shark, fall out of coconut tree,
or eat a toxic fish. We do know that 1938 was a year of record-setting
drought in the area. On the whole, I’d bet against anyone lasting two
years marooned on Niku at that time, but I can’t say it would be impossible.

LTM,
Ric

Subject:

Goerner’s Friend Game

Date:

9/5/98

From:

Ric Gillespie

From Ric

With the help of a forum subscriber I was able to phone Fred Goerner’s
former associate Ross Game. You may recall that Game was with Goerner
in 1965 when they reviewed then-classified Navy files which, according
to Goerner, included a message from Earhart allegedly heard by Nauru at
10:30 a.m. on the morning of July 2nd saying, “Land in sight ahead.”
Goerner later said that when the file was declassified the message mysteriously
disappeared. He said he was sure that the message was originally there
because his notes and Games completely agreed about its content. My primary
interest in talking to Ross Game was to confirm that these two contemporaneous
written accounts of what was in the Navy file in 1965 indeed exist.

I regret to report that Ross Game, who seems to be a very nice guy, is
in poor health and was scheduled to go into the hospital for a biopsy
on a brain tumor the day after I talked to him. He told me that he has
been working on the Amelia Earhart mystery for 30 years and is convinced
that she was held prisoner by the Japanese on Saipan and died there of
dysentery. He is also certain that the government is holding back information.
He says that he is sure that, while working with Goerner, he saw a great
many documents relating to Earhart that have never been made public. I
asked him if he ever saw any document which established a covert relationship
between Earhart and the government. He said no, but there are just too
many people on Saipan who remember seeing a woman who could only have
been Amelia Earhart.

I asked him whether he remembers seeing the “land in sight ahead”
message and he said, “I could say yes but to tell you the honest
truth I’ve talked about that so often with so many people that now I don’t
know whether I’m remembering the message or the story about seeing it.”
I asked if he had the notes that Goerner referred to. He said no.

So “land in sight ahead,” at this point, lives only in the realm
of anecdote. Maybe Wiley Rollins can find Fred’s notes from that visit
at the Nimitz Museum. That would be something anyway.

LTM,
Ric

Subject:

Photo
of Gurr and AE

Date:

9.5.98

From:

Jack 2157

Well, I almost had a scoop. Since you had seen the Al Gray article, you
gave me a break but I’m not done with you yet.

I am getting a bit gun shy with regard to info I come across and may want
to convey to the Forum. Lets use the Al Gray article as an example. You
indicated Gray’s article is full of conjecture stated as fact without
documentation. Taking into consideration that were dealing with “historical
investigation,” I still have to come to Gray’s defense. My reason,
Al Gray knew these people personally and WAS PART OF THAT ERA and not
some third person doing a research paper for an article some 60 yrs. hence.
I think this fact alone should give the article and its contents some
worth. Sure the John Ray photo is recent but that does not make the information
he supplied invalid. Why should John Ray give his friend invalid info?
These guys all knew each other even though they worked for different companies.
I don’t understand why you call the info anecdotal when it was person-to-person.
If I was Al Gray talking to John Ray, I would accept his statement as
fact and that’s what Al did. I consider that competent evidence. I could
see you asking me for documentation if I had written the article but these
guys were there in 37.

I think one has to know the character/integrity of the person they are
dealing with and a special trust or bond is developed. Then, information
that is communicated within that bond is accepted as fact. I sense this
with you and certain people you talk to on the Forum.

It’s interesting to note the month the trailing antenna and associated
gear was removed in the Al Gray article (May) is the same as the month
you have on your “trump” photo.

Is it not possible the body work was done at the repair facility in Burbank
and the trailing antenna was removed when AE arrived in MIA (remove the
antenna end weight and push the wire into the body in Burbank)? John Ray,
a radio tech comes along and does the interior work...removes the trailing
wire reel, antenna connection to the WE radio equipment and control at
the cockpit. Now that’s conjecture but the photo you have cannot disprove
it.

Anyway, I think the article is technically accurate and should have a
higher acceptance value because of the authors direct contact with people
from the era. Until I see something better, that’s my position. By the
way, I never met Al Gray

Now I’m done.

Hope I'm not out of line.

LTM, Jack #2157

From Ric

You're not at all out of line. You’ve provided me with an excuse to explain
our approach to evidence, which is of course the entire foundation of
our investigation.

>I think one has to know the character/integrity of the person
they are dealing with and a special trust or bond
>
is developed. Then,
information that is communicated within that bond is accepted as fact.
I sense this with you
>
and certain people you talk to on the Forum.

No. That is not the way it works. If I appear to accept one person’s facts
more than another’s it is because I have learned which forum subscribers
understand scientific method and can (and do) back up their statements
with documentation. Of course that cuts the other way too. I hope that
nobody on this forum takes my word for anything. If I can’t back it up
with hard evidence it’s just my opinion, which is every bit as subject
to error as anyone else’s.

We start with the assumption that people can remember things wrong. Even
intelligent, well-intentioned paragons of integrity like you and me are
often unable to accurately reconstruct the events of last week, let alone
years ago. Maybe we remember things correctly, maybe we don’t – there’s
just no way to tell. The only way to beat this gremlin is to write down
what happened as soon as possible after the event. If somebody recognizes
the importance of an event and writes down what happened in a timely fashion,
we have a “contemporaneous written account.” We consider that
to be good evidence.

Photographs are also pretty good. The camera doesn’t lie, but of course,
we must be careful that we don’t put our own interpretations on the photo
and make it something that it isn’t. The Wreck Photo is a classic example
of how tricky it can be to interpret a photo, and that is also why I qualified
my comments about the Burbank photo not showing external signs of a trailing
wire.

Sometimes we’re fortunate enough to have more than one contemporaneous
written account. If they agree about what happened, that’s pretty darned
good. An example of this is the question of how much fuel was aboard NR16020
when it left Lae. Two independent authorities – James Collopy, the District
Superintendent of Civil Aviation; and Eric Chater. the General Manager
of Guinea Airways – each wrote letters soon after the event saying that
there were 1,100 U.S. gallons of gas aboard that airplane. That doesn’t
mean that there were 1,100 U.S. gallons aboard, but it does mean that
two guys who were there both thought that AT THE TIME. For an historical
investigator, that’s about as good as it gets.

Unfortunately, most of the time we don’t have contemporaneous written
accounts and we’re stuck with the notoriously fallible human memory. If
you want to make it sound good you call it “oral history” or
“first-person historical testimony.” But “old stories”
and “folklore” are equally valid terms. We use the handle “anecdotal
evidence” as a neutral description. Any time anybody tells us something
about an event in the past which they can not back up with a contemporaneous
written account, it’s anecdotal and highly suspect unless and until we
can find better evidence to corroborate it. Classic example: In 1960 Floyd
Kilts tells a San Diego newspaper that in 1946 a “native” on
Gardner told him that bones had been found on the island. We found former
residents of the island who also said that bones had been found. But we
did not accept the discovery of bones as fact until Gallagher’s contemporaneous
written account turned up.

It is apparent from his article in Naval History that Almon Gray
did not understand this crucial distinction. His expertise in radio and
familiarity with the procedures of the time were beyond question, but
his assessment of the Lae/Howland flight was based upon assumptions gathered
from anecdotes. For the radio set-up aboard the Electra he took what Joe
Gurr told Fred Goerner in 1982, then put his own interpretation on it,
and stated categorically that a “new receiver” was installed
aboard the airplane by Lockheed. It was “an experimental model incorporating
the latest improvements. Only three experimental units were built, although
Bendix later marketed an almost identical design as the Type RA-1 Aircraft
Radio Receiver.” He then goes to describe in some detail the capabilities
of this new receiver. Not once does he offer a shred of credible evidence
that this device even existed.

In describing the rest of the airplane’s radio system he states flatly
that the loop was a Bendix Type MN-20. But the August 1937 issue of Aero
Digest magazine contains an article on the “Newest Developments
in the Field of Aircraft Radio.” It describes the “Bendix D-Fs”
and notes the features of the MN-1, MN-3, MN-5, and MN-7. The MN-5 sounds
most like Earhart’s. There is no mention of an MN-20.

He says that when the plane left the Lockheed plant it had a “250-foot
trailing wire antenna on an electrically operated, remote-controlled reel
at the rear of the plane. The wire exited the lower fuselage through an
insulated bushing and had a lead weight, or ‘fish’, at the end
to keep it from whipping when deployed.” It did not. The truth is
that it had a set up similar to what Gray describes at the time of the
Luke Field crash. When it came out of repair, all external evidence of
trailing wire was gone. If you want to speculate that the heavy mechanism
was left aboard with no way to deploy it, and carried all the way to Miami
before being removed by John Ray, I have nothing to dispute that, but
there is nothing but unsubstantiated anecdote to suggest that such an
odd thing happened.

Not to beat a dead horse, but Gray states that Earhart maintained two-way
communication with the Lae radio operator, Harry Balfour, for first seven
hours of the flight. This comes from a letter Balfour wrote in 1969. The
available contemporaneous written accounts suggest quite the reverse.
Lae sent messages to Earhart, and Lae heard some messages from Earhart,
but there appears to be no evidence that Earhart ever heard anything that
Lae sent.

Because Gray didn’t understand and follow the rules of the game he –
like so many others before and since (including, on occasion, me) – applied
his genuine expertise to an invalid picture and, inevitably, drew invalid
conclusions. This is a tough, tough business. We’ll only find the incontrovertible
physical evidence we’re looking for if we’re correct in the conclusions
we draw about where to look.

No need to be gun shy about passing along information. Just ask yourself
what kind of information it really is.

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